'The creaky PDS will not be able to do the job.'  The recommendations of the National Advisory Council for the National Food Security Act, made after much discussion and many revisions, cast the net wide to include 75 per cent of the country’s population within the purview of the scheme.It is the most ambitious  food entitlement scheme conceived anywhere in the world and the conceptual and implementation problems are very daunting....

Terming the recommendations of the National Advisory Council on the proposed Food Security Bill as discouraging, senior leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Sitaram Yechury on Friday underlined the need for a people's movement to pressure the Manmohan Singh government to go in for a universal public distribution system to ensure food security in the country. Addressing a seminar on food security at the CPI(M) State headquarters here, Mr....

Block vehicular and railway traffic across Punjab, demand relaxation of paddy procurement norms Various factions of the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) and organisations of landless labourers blocked the railway traffic at Moga and ten other locations in Punjab on Friday. They also halted the vehicular traffic on many highways, demanding relaxation in the procurement norms of paddy. The protesters claimed that adverse weather conditions had affected the quality of grains, and said...

After months of public and internal debate, the National Advisory Council (NAC) — an organisation whose clout and significance derive from the fact that Sonia Gandhi chairs it — has put forth a set of recommendations for the National Food Security Act. The core recommendations are to provide legal entitlements to cereals for 75 per cent of India's population, that is, 90 per cent of the rural population and the...

More hands join to support the cause of `Kisan Swaraj' and `safe food for all, sans Bt'. Adding momentum to this cause, the Kisan Swaraj Yatra reached Bangalore on Sunday. At a public meeting in the Institute of Agricultural technologists (IAT), Kodihalli Chandrasekhar, president, Karnataka Rajya Raithara Sangha (KRRS) assured that over 5,000 farmers from the state will join the yatra when it ends at Raj Ghat, in New Delhi, on...